The present invention relates to the field of electronic bill payment systems (“bill pay”) which allow a consumer to direct their bank, an agent of their bank, or a non-bank bill pay service bureau to pay amounts owed to merchants, service providers and other billers who bill consumers for amounts owed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,206 issued to James J. Hilt et al. teaches a bill pay system in where each participating payee is assigned a biller reference number (“BRN”). That patent (“the Hilt Patent”) is commonly owned by the assignee of the present application and is incorporated by reference herein for all purposes. In the Hilt bill pay system, a consumer could make a payment to a biller without any prior payment arrangements required between the consumer and the biller, so long as the consumer knew the biller's BRN and the consumer's account number with the biller (C-B account number). Various electronic bill payment data entry methods are disclosed in Hilt, such as entry over a telephone link using voice recognition or using the keys of the telephone, or entry into a personal computer program which eventually transmits the bill payment instructions to the consumer's bank or the bank's agent.
In other prior art systems, a biller creates an invoice which includes a remittance stub and sends the invoice with a request that the consumer return the remittance stub with the consumer's check in payment of the invoice (“white mail”). Because billers can rely on receiving the remittance stubs back, billers will typically encode each remittance stub to assist with automatic data entry of billing information into an electronic billing system once the remittance stub and check are received. Thus, if the consumer returns the remittance stub, the biller does not have to rely on the consumer to correctly indicate the C-B account number. This system has worked well where billers actually do receive the remittance stub. However, in an electronic bill pay system, paper documents do not generally change hands.
Because paper documents do not change hands, billers must rely on the consumer for data capture of information from the invoice, which is generally less reliable than electronic (e.g., optically scanned) data capture from remittance stubs at the biller's site. In addition, where a consumer enters a C-B account number manually, the biller must still perform manual data entry.
One solution in the prior art for ensuring correct data entry by a consumer is the pick list. With a pick list, the consumer submits a list of payees with a BRN and a C-B account number for each payee. Of course, if the Hilt system is not used, more information than the BRN is required, such as the biller name, address' telephone number, etc. The list of payees is then verified by the consumer's bank to ensure that the correct billers have been identified and that the C-B account numbers listed by the consumer are the account numbers for that consumer. Once this is done, the consumer is supplied with a pick list of billers. If the billers on the pick list are numbered, the consumer then need only enter the pick list entry number in lieu of data capture of the biller identification and C-B account number. The pick list is either a paper document, as might be used for telephone data entry systems, or an electronic document, as might be used for personal computer based bill payment systems.
The problem with this approach is that the ability to connect a particular consumer with a particular biller without any prior connection is lost, since the consumer must have had the biller previously verified and placed on the pick list. Thus, a consumer cannot decide to pay a new biller and make a payment without the intervening delay for verification.
The pick list approach is also undesirable because C-B account numbers can change without any awareness of the consumer. For example, in the utility industry, C-B account numbers encode for a meter reading route. The meter reading routes are periodically updated, as routes are optimized and as new housing and commercial developments arise to alter the optimization of routes and route distribution. Typically, a meter reading route for a given C-B account changes once each five years. If pick lists are used, or the consumer relies on other means of prestoring the C-B account number, the transaction will be in error once each five years. While this is not a problem for an individual error, if the error costs $25 to fix between the consumer's time, the biller's time and any customer service time and expense, the average cost per transaction is about 41 cents since the error will occur in one out of each sixty transactions (assuming monthly billing).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,283,829 (issued to Anderson) discloses a bill payment system where a bill is printed with an approval code. The approval code includes error coding and maps to the C-B account number and the particular bill (i.e., it maps to a particular month if the bills are monthly). The mapping from the approval code to the C-B account number and the month are provided by a table maintained by the biller. While this system is useful for a single biller and where current bills are paid in full, it does not include a biller identifier and therefore is not useful for a global system. Furthermore, there is no provision for automatic data capture of the data provided. A consumer must enter the number as printed on the bill, and entry errors are expected, requiring the consumer to reenter the approval code.
Therefore, what is needed is an improved method and apparatus for correctly capturing data from an invoice including data specifying biller identification and a C-B account number.